The Weekly Commute

I've been predominately shooting and posting to my Instagram story during my commute to and from work recently. Here's the collection of images from this week. 

The Civil Registry - Kushi & Kalpesh

I had the pleasure of photographing Kushi & Kalpesh's civil registry ceremony at Hendon Town Hall in late March. From the morning preparations through to the evening party, hosted at The Indian Orchid restaurant, the day was filled with laughter & love from a crazy, fun filled group of family and friends, and it truly was a privilege to be there. A massive congratulations to Kushi & Kalpesh once again, you guys were the best! 

Loitering In London - Shooting Film

I shot a couple of rolls of 35mm film over the past weekend for the first time in about 8 years. I had a few thoughts of shooting film in this digital era that were quite contradictory, so I thought I'd try and break these thoughts down.

Pros:

- slows you down and makes you think about the composition, lighting and exposure of each image you take

- colours look a lot more vibrant and contrasty than a normal RAW file

- the wait of waiting for the film to arrive back from the developers (in this case Metro Imaging in London) removes the modern day instant gratification needed when shooting digitally and checking the LCD screen after every photo

Cons:

- not being able to motordrive through 4-5 images meant that sometimes I might have missed the so called "decisive moment" on a few occasions

- having the options of shooting RAW allows me to choose the amount of contrast, saturation etc I want in the image after the fact, rather than at the point of choosing which film to use

- not being able to post to Instagram within two minutes of taking a picture is a bit annoying 😉 

So, as you can see, the pros and the cons pretty much cancel each other out. What I take from this then, is that, like I said in a previous blog, it really doesn't make a difference what you're shooting with, as long as it gets the job done.

What are your experiences and thoughts on shooting film?? Does it still have a place in modern photography?? Let us know what you think!

Deven's Wedding Week

Most weddings take place over the course of around an hour or so, with a reception party taking place in the evening. However, Hindu weddings aren't like most weddings. Various events, from the engagement ceremony to mehndhi nights, can take place days, weeks and even months in advance of the big day. These provide the perfect opportunity to celebrate the upcoming nuptials with friends and family. The events really ramp up during the week prior to the wedding.

To kick the wedding week off, we normally start with "Lagan Vadhava". The bride's brother and other close members of family bring a letter to the groom's house containing details of the bride and groom, ie. the name of their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, where they're originally from and the wedding dates and location. The groom's mother will then leave a handprint on the brother of the bride as a sign of acceptance of this letter. He's also fed a handful of sugar to keep things sweet. This signifies the start of the wedding week.

Over the next few days, families host sanji nights. Ladies get together and sing traditional wedding songs, apply mehndhi to each others hands, and the gents sit around and discuss weather, who's related to who and whatever else. And of course, the night always ends with a giant group selfie. 

The day before the wedding, three short ceremonies normally take place; the mandvo, mameru and pithi. The mandvo ceremony involves the parents of the couple seeking blessings from the gods to continue with the wedding preparations and ceremony.

The mameru involves the groom's maternal uncles giving gifts to the family. These range from clothes, jewellery, sarees and, most importantly, loads of sweets!

The pithi involves the ladies of the family applying a tumeric and chickpea flour paste to the groom as a way of cleansing him before the big day. These tend to get way out of hand as the groom soon finds out!

It was an absolute pleasure photographing these days and events, it is always great to spend a fair amount of time with subjects and try and capture the mood of celebrations and festivities of a wedding week. 

The Proposal - Niki & Jai

When one of your best mates calls you up to say he's proposing to his girlfriend over the weekend and asks you to come down with your camera, the answer has to be yes! Jai gave me this call last week, so I headed up to Leicester amidst the cold and the snow to capture the proposal! 

The day itself went down without a hitch (apart from one of my camera batteries dying halfway through the shoot even though it was fully charged at the beginning of the shoot) and it truly was a privilege to be there. Big shout out to Steven, PJ, Yamuna, Rupal and everyone else involved for organising everything and finally a massive congratulations once again to Niki & Jai!

EnSpirit Global - The Global Impact Network

I am a contributor to EnSpirit Global, a network run by my cousin Baiju Solanki, which aims to develop entrepreneurial mindsets within the world of business and education. EnSpirit Global runs meet up events for its various contributors called The Global Impact Network. These events are a perfect way to network with fellow contributors and people that are successful in their own fields. 

  

Loitering In London - My Intro To Street Photography

If you've been following my Instagram page recently, you would've seen my attempts at street photography (if not, you're playing yourself - follow me @viransolankiphotography). I do get asked by friends and family about how I go about taking these photographs, so I thought I would try and break down my philosophies on how I go about taking these pictures.

Before I start, I'd just like to preface this by saying that I am in no means a high level genius type street photographer. I'd highly recommend checking out the work of Kevin Mullins, Henri Cartier Bresson, Jay Maisel or even searching street photography hashtags on Instagram to find photos a million times better than my own.

1. YOU ALWAYS HAVE A CAMERA ON YOU

I think we sometimes take for granted how accessible photography is nowadays. The ability to constantly have a camera in your smartphone, and take near enough an unlimited amount of photos is something relatively new and I think under utilised. You don't need a big DSLR or fancy compact camera to take cool images. Think of whatever camera you have, be it a DSLR, smartphone or even a Tesco Value disposable camera, in the same way as a painter has different types of brushes.

2. LOOK FOR COOL LIGHT

To carry on the painting analogy, if a photographer's brush is their camera, you could say their paint is light (yes I know I sound like a total douche but bare with me). I'm always attracted to cool-looking light (#windowlight), be it the warm colours on a long summer's evening, or the cold and urban colours of a tube platform. Be aware of how light reflects of certain types of surfaces, from a puddle on the street, to a wall of a building. Harsh light on a clear day will give you opportunities to play with shadows within your compositions, whereas soft light on a cloudy day acts like a massive light diffuser and tends to make the light look very even. 
 

3. RIPS IN THE FABRIC

Jay Maisel said it best when he said that he is "looking for rips in the fabric" when he's out shooting. I'm always looking for something out of the ordinary. If you go out with no pre-conceived notions of what you want to photograph - ie. I need to take a photograph of a person with red hair looking at a red bus with a telephone box in the background - you'll be amazed at how often something will catch your eye and intrigue you. For me, its normally crazy cool colours or interesting gestures or positions that makes me want to pull the camera to my eye.

4. TAKE LOADS OF PHOTOS

I think this is the most overlooked aspect of photography, yet the simplest action to execute. I take a ridiculous amount of images. The only way I found that truly improves all aspects and genres of my photography is finding time to shoot as often as possible. Maybe that might mean getting off a tube stop earlier than normal and walking on the way back from work, or dedicating a weekend afternoon to go and explore a new place and shoot. This might seem like so much extra effort at first, but I guarantee once you do this two or three times, you'll start to get into it, and start noticing cool looking light and rips in the fabric even more. Your legs might ache after the end of the day shooting, but it'll definitely be worth it!

And that's pretty much it! That's all I think about when out shooting, but there is so much more that you can learn from photographers I mentioned previously and elsewhere online. It would be awesome to see your own street photos! Share them on Instagram using #todaysloitering 

Thanks for reading rudeboys, can't wait to see your images and let me know what you think about this kind of post!